Donald Trump rallies Republicans in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, in a battleground state where the fight for an open US Senate seat has turned into one of the ugliest clashes of the midterm campaign — a contest over religion, loyalty and who counts as American.
Trump is due to speak at McMorran Place Arena at 3 p.m. local time, a day after former President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in the same state. It is the first visit by a sitting US president to Port Huron and St Clair County, and local officials expect large crowds in the downtown area.
Michigan holds one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. Former Republican Representative Mike Rogers faces Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed in an open-seat contest that could help decide control of the chamber in the November 3 midterms.
A historic first — and a campaign of attacks
If he wins, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate. Trump has seized on that fact, repeatedly attacking El-Sayed from the Oval Office and at rallies across the country, seeking to paint him as a Muslim extremist and mocking his middle name, Mohamed — a common Muslim name.
Rogers has gone further, alleging without evidence that El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world's oldest and most influential Islamist groups. At a debate last week, Rogers demanded to know: "Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?"
El-Sayed has denied any affiliation with the group and called it "shameful" for Rogers to question his allegiance to the United States. In a recent campaign advertisement, he defended his faith, saying: "Faith is a thing there's just too little of in Washington."
Obama: "We have seen this movie before"
At Saturday's rally in Detroit, Obama framed the attacks on El-Sayed as an attempt by his opponents to make him look "less patriotic and less American than they are" — and compared it to his own experience as the target of false claims that he was born in Kenya.
"We have seen this movie before," Obama said. "I starred in it … This stuff didn't work on me. Not in Michigan. It's not going to work on Abdul."
Despite repeatedly attacking El-Sayed, Trump had not yet campaigned in Michigan this year before Sunday's rally — a sign of how late, and how hard, both parties are now fighting for the state.
Why it matters
With control of the Senate on the line and the midterms just nine days away, Michigan's open seat is one of the races that will decide who governs Washington. But the contest has also become a test of whether attacks on a candidate's religion still work in American politics — or whether, as Obama argued in Detroit, voters have already seen this movie and know how it ends.
Reporting based on Reuters, FOX 2 Detroit and the Michigan Republican Party.